2/08/2005

No Free Speech For Ward Churchill, Part 2 (And the Continuing Need to Sodomize Bill O'Reilly With a Microphone):Yesterday, the Rude Pundit laid out, with breathtaking brevity, the background of the Ward Churchill "uproar" (if by "uproar," you mean "a hate machine against Churchill fueled by the mad rantings and self-hating rage of Bill O'Reilly, who really is the worst kind of cocksucker, the kind who thinks that if he just deep throats the whole cock, he's doing the job, without realizing that licking, lapping, and tickling are part of the game").

O'Reilly continued his jihad against Churchill (gradually expanding his focus to include all of academia - see the cocksucker reference above) last night with the "revelation" that Churchill said, nearly a year ago, in the magazine Satya that "it may be that more 9/11s are necessary" in order to move people beyond complacency about their government. In context, the entire quote says that American leftists are too complacent about ongoing violence overseas and, in Churchill's worldview, which encompasses the world itself, in order to mobilize, something more personal may need to be at stake. It's really not so different, if you think about it, from news reports that emphasized, say, the number of Europeans killed in the tsunami. Yeah, yeah, lots of brown people may die, but, heavens, when white people are involved, we must act.

And, if you think about it, and if O'Reilly thinks about it, which he won't, his mouth so filled with thrusting cock that it affects his brain function, Churchill's seeking of a mobilizing event is not that different, from, say, page 51 of the neocon 2000 manifesto, the Project for the New American Century's "Rebuilding America's Defenses," which says, "the process of transformation [of America's defenses to, essentially, 'projection of influence'], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." So the neocons "called for" a new Pearl Harbor so their ideology could be ascendant. But, of course, those who supported this position, like William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, haven't been forced out of their jobs and excoriated in the "mainstream" media.

But this is not really about Bill O'Reilly, entirely (last night, O'Reilly bizarrely berated Owen, saying UC is out of control and that Churchill is an embarassment to the entire state). It's about Ward Churchill, and it ain't about what he said. The Rude Pundit is not judging whether or not Churchill was hit-the-nail-on-the-head right or a stupid fucker for using the phrase "little Eichmanns" to describe the financial, defense, and intelligence industry people who were in the Twin Towers on 9/11. It's about Churchill's right to say it, about the right of anyone to say, for instance, that President Bush is a self-flagellating mental dwarf who can only come when jacking off on Laura's tits while Dick Cheney massages his own prostate in the corner.

When the recent study came out saying that more than a third of high school students think that "the First Amendment goes too far," we crossed some kind of line where the actual definition of America is on the line. These students don't understand the meaning of dissent because, really, there's very little means for disseminating dissent (beyond Left Blogsylvania). And when truly radical dissent surfaces, idiot fuckers with big microphones and little minds, like your O'Reillies, your Limbaughs, and your Coulters, do their goddamnedest to punish it and thus demonstrate that to dissent is to be punished, to lose your career if your words offend the power structure.

Words have consequences, of course, of course, and Churchill knows that. He knows the value of provocation and the truth behind uncivil discourse. But Churchill wants action, too. Part of that Satya interview is devoted Churchill's view on what pussies the protesters on the Left have become: "If you conduct your protest activities in a manner which is sanctioned by the state, the state understands that the protest will have no effect on anything. You can gauge the effectiveness—real or potential at least—of any line of activity by the degree of severity of repression visited upon it by the state. It responds harshly to those things it sees as, at least incipiently, destabilizing. So you look where they are visiting repression: that’s exactly what you need to be doing . . . Nonviolent action can be effectual when harnessed in a way that is absolutely unacceptable to the state: if you actually clog the freeways or occupy sites or whatever to disrupt state functioning with the idea of ultimately making it impossible for the state to function at all, and are willing to incur the consequences of that. That’s very different from people standing with little signs, making a statement. Statements don’t do it. If [they] did, we would have transformed society in this country more than a century ago." As the Rude Pundit said yesterday, of course people like Churchill must be silenced.

Words do have consequences, yes, but are Churchill's words more inflammatory than, say, stating that Iraq wants to use weapons to attack the U.S.? Or that Social Security is in a spiraling crisis? Whose words do real and actual harm to the frayed fabric of this democracy?

The University of Colorado Board of Regents, as well as the state of Colorado, are looking at Churchill's works in order to attempt to fire him (he's tenured, so it'll be a fuck of a battle to do so, and for all you stupid fuckers who wanna banish tenure, it's because of fights like this that tenure exists). And what the University and the State will teach its citizens, its children, is that if you don't toe the line, you will be publicly flayed, you insignificant motherfuckers.

And what students all over Colorado, in colleges and high schools, will learn is a variation of what O'Reilly says all the time: "Shut up. You will have freedom of speech when we say you have it." And the saddest part is many, many of those students will agree that that is good, and right, and the way of this new America and its ever more slippery slope to real fascism.

If and/or when that happens, you know who's gonna be out there with a megaphone, gettin' his ass beaten and thrown in jail to protect the freedoms that no one else believes they need? You know the answer to that question, and it ain't Bill O'Reilly.